This is the Forward’s coverage of Jewish culture where you’ll learn about the latest (and sometimes earliest) in Jewish art, music (including of course Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen), film, theater, books as well as the secret Jewish history of…
Culture
-
How A Forverts Video Reunited Two Old Friends
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. In an apartment somewhere in the metropolis of New York City, the distinguished composer Gershon Kingsley was sitting by his archive when he found sheet music for a composition he had created years ago for the dancer Naomi Leaf Halpern, and he realized that it had been…
-
Why Trump’s Callous Call To End Birthright Citizenship Is A Jewish Issue
President Trump’s calls to strip American-born citizens of their citizenship should chill all Americans, but it is especially disturbing to anyone with knowledge of Jewish history. Citizenship is a profoundly Jewish issue. In the Middle Ages, many Jews were simply not citizens of their countries. “In much of Europe during the Middle Ages, Jews were…
-
Russian Scientist In Antarctica Attacked Co-Worker For Spoiling Book Endings
By its nature Antarctica, has the lowest crime rate of any continent. Housing only a few thousand souls across approximately 66 research bases, spread far apart, the small population of mostly scientists doesn’t allow for many opportunities for extralegal activities. But this month a Russian scientist has been extradited back to his home country after…
The Latest
-
Of Course We Have To ‘Politicize’ The Pittsburgh Bloodbath. That’s What Jews Do.
This week, you will hear many voices telling you not to “politicize” the shootings in Pittsburgh. “I will not politicize the murder of 11 Jews,” celebrity rabbi Shmuley Boteach wrote, before bizarrely connecting Pittsburgh to the Iran deal. “Have a moment of silence, light a candle,” Shmuel Rosner suggested, and don’t “treat this butchery of…
-
Jez Butterworth’s Tale Of Love And Darkness
From generation to generation, family wounds re-open. Stories pass on from elders to rapt youth with the ring of truth, the air of prophecy or the bitter tang of regret. The youth of today grows up into its adult responsibilities toward a homeland — one riven by 70 years of war and occupation — that…
-
Henrik Galeen: The Jewish Master Of Silent Horror
We all know the story of Judah Loew ben Bezalel, the legendary rabbi of Prague who, from the mud of the Vltava River, willed his famous Golem into existence. But what of Henrik Galeen, the Austrian Jewish horror maven who first committed the story to the silver screen? In Galeen’s hands, the servile terracotta enforcer…
-
How An Orthodox Businesswoman Rose In The Ranks At The NSA
Forty-two-year-old Anne Neuberger, an Orthodox Jewish woman, was tapped by the National Security Agency as its first chief risk officer, a senior slot if ever there was one. She took the job in 2014 in the wake of Edward Snowden leaking classified NSA information to the world, thus throwing the Pentagon, along with pundits of…
-
The Straight Line From 5,000 Trump Lies To 11 Jews Murdered In Pittsburgh
‘There must be no tolerance for anti-Semitism in America,” Donald Trumptold the Future Farmers of America following the mass murder in a Pittsburgh synagogue at a Sabbath service — the same Trump who said that some of the neo-Nazis chanting “Jews will not replace us” in Charlottesville were “very fine people.” “This wicked act of…
-
Film & TV Will Kushner And Spielberg ‘West Side Story’ Cause Rumble With Sondheim?
Stephen Sondheim, the lyricist for “West Side Story,” dislikes the movie version of the seminal musical for sticking too closely to the source material. “I don’t think ‘West Side Story’ [is] a good movie at all because it’s not a movie. It’s a photograph of a stage,” the Tony-winning composer said in a 2016 interview…
-
The Forgotten Jewish Composer Who Was McCarthy’s First Victim
The composer Hanns Eisler was once called “the Karl Marx of Communism in the musical field” by House of Un-American Activities chief investigator Robert Stripling. That description might be an overstatement, but not by much. Eisler scored some of the most pivotal moments of the first part of the 20th century. His populist anthems were…
-
Why We Must Pay Attention To What ‘Pay Attention’ Means
In the age of the smartphone, it is getting harder and harder to get human beings to give their all to one person, one subject and one moment. Maybe that’s why a tweet on how various languages express the idea of “paying attention” went viral recently, amassing 28,000 likes and over 7,000 retweets at last…
Explore
Most Popular
- 1
Fast Forward Unarmed man who tackled Bondi Beach Hanukkah attacker identified as Ahmed al-Ahmed
- 2
Fast Forward First Puka Nacua, now Mookie Betts: Why do sports stars keep getting antisemitic around a Jewish streamer?
- 3
Fast Forward After MIT professor’s killing, Jewish influencers spread unverified antisemitism claim
- 4
Opinion I grew up believing Australia was the best place to be Jewish. This Hanukkah shooting forces a reckoning I do not want.
In Case You Missed It
-
Opinion When my children decorate for Hanukkah, I don’t just see pride. I see pluralism in action.
-
Fast Forward ‘The most Australian name’: Matilda, the youngest victim of the Bondi Beach attack, embodies a nation’s grief
-
Fast Forward A Wider Bridge, a pro-Israel advocate in LGBTQ spaces, is shutting down
-
Yiddish פֿאַר וואָס הערט מען ניט וועגן דעם גלעצנדיקן וווּקס פֿון דער ישׂראל־בערזע? Why aren’t we hearing about the dramatic growth of the Israeli stock market?
וואָלט דער אָפּרוף געווען אַנדערש, ווען דער ציל פֿון די טעראָריסטן וואָלט ניט געווען ייִדן, נאָר אַן אַנדער גרופּע?
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
